Baseball: Memorial takes Game 1 from Bellaire 6-3

Memorial's Harris Rome, right, is congratulated by Nick Glanzman after Rome crossed home plate for the first score of the first inning.

Memorial's Harris Rome, right, is congratulated by Nick Glanzman after Rome crossed home plate for the first score of the first inning.

Photo: Michael Paulsen, Chronicle

Photo: Michael Paulsen, Chronicle

Image
1of/1

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 1

Memorial's Harris Rome, right, is congratulated by Nick Glanzman after Rome crossed home plate for the first score of the first inning.

Memorial's Harris Rome, right, is congratulated by Nick Glanzman after Rome crossed home plate for the first score of the first inning.

Photo: Michael Paulsen, Chronicle

Baseball: Memorial takes Game 1 from Bellaire 6-3

1 / 1

Back to Gallery

In order to keep advancing deeper into the postseason, Memorial coach Jeremy York knows he needs good performances from everybody —stars and role players.

In Game 1 of the Mustangs' Class 5A Region III quarterfinal series with Bellaire, that happened — but nobody played his role better than Mike Cotton.

The diminutive lefthander pitched 6 1⁄3 innings of scoreless relief to help the Mustangs earn a 6-3 victory over the Cardinals on Thursday at Jersey Village High School.

York called Cotton's number eight batters into the first inning, after senior righthander Nick Bergmann struggled, walking four and allowing three runs. Cotton got the final out of the inning, then proceeded to pitch three-hit baseball on a season-high 78 pitches the rest of the way to keep the Cardinals off the scoreboard.

“When he put me in I knew I had to throw strikes,” said Cotton, who has seen the mound primarily in short relief stints this season. “That's what we preach and I kept telling myself in between innings —just throw strikes and I'll get through it.”

Cotton struck out four , walked one, hit a batter and only once allowed a runner past second base in the final six innings.

“He has accepted his role and good things happen to good people when they accept that role,” York said. “Now on the biggest stage, he's our hero. That's what teams are made out of.”

Trailing 3-1 after the first, Memorial got a leadoff double from Nick Glanzman followed by an RBI single by Ben Carl (3-for-4) in the second inning to cut the deficit to a run. In the fourth, center fielder Harris Rome's two-RBI single drove in Sean Horacek and Carl to give the Mustangs the lead, then David Holland followed with an RBI single to score Rome for a 5-3 lead off Bellaire ace Toller Boardman.

Boomer White added an RBI single in the fifth, scoring Glanzman for the sixth run. Of the six runs Boardman allowed, only three were earned as the Cardinals committed three errors.

Boardman helped his own cause in the first inning with a two-RBI single, but catcher Daniel Gerow (first-inning RBI sacrifice fly) was the only other Cardinal to drive in a run. Meanwhile, every Mustangs batter had at least one base hit.

“The bottom line is that they hit the ball well,” Bellaire coach Rocky Manuel said of the Mustangs. “They had four two-out hits.”

The Cardinals, ranked second in the state, aren't panicking and the Mustangs — ranked sixth— aren't resting on their laurels either. These same teams met in the same round last year and the series started the same way — with a Memorial victory — before Bellaire rallied to win the final two games of the series and advance.

“We were in this exact same situation last year,” York said. “We have to put this game behind us and go play the next seven innings and go from there.”

Manuel exuded confidence after Thursday's loss.

“If you want to predict the future, you look at the past,” Manuel said. “This ain't over.”